


Dixon's Girl

by just_about_nothing



Series: A Badly Broken Code [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, F/M, Fucked up ending, Kinda, Music, Relationship Problems, Songfic, noir, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 04:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10914066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_about_nothing/pseuds/just_about_nothing
Summary: "A managers’ role has evolved away from choosing which labels/agents/publishers/attorneys to work with, towards finding ways to best help artists increase their fan base and generate more income."- Artist Management Resource"This industry is a cesspit of wanna-bes, has-beens, and a string of fuckers who I can’t tell apart. There have been a few who escaped that general mix, became something big or were just sospecialthat I couldn't just lump them in with the general population."





	Dixon's Girl

**Author's Note:**

> The Jackson at the beginning of this story is Jackson, Wyoming. The Jackson in the song is Jackson, Mississippi. I know very little about the music industry so if you work within it, please let me know of any errors so I can correct them. Thank you.

**Well someone taught/Your walls to talk/But if they ask me/I ain't heard a thing**

This industry is a cesspool of wanna-bes, has-beens, and a string of fuckers who I can’t tell apart. There have been a few who escaped that general mix, became something big or were just so _special_ that I couldn't just lump them in with the general population. Dixon's girl was one of them. I never knew her in a professional context, just saw her play a few times, talked to her after her shows. Still, she was something pretty and perfect. You can find her in all those gossip rags right now. Look for them for the shady facts, just erring on this side of the truth. I tell no tales, nor is this me eulogizing her. We were friends, or as close as someone like her can get to someone like me, and this is how we met. 

**Back to the wall/Back to the ball/Back to the drawing board again**

I was managing this hip-hop duo at the time, a banjo player and the rapper. They weren't that good, but someone closer to the top of the music industry thought they were going to be the next Eminem. So I got to manage the brats. They were on a tour of the country and one of them thought it would be a good idea to go up to Wyoming to play for all the cowboys up there. I tried to get them to go elsewhere but the banjo player thought that mixing banjo-rap and not quite civilized cowboys with lots of guns was a good idea. Just for the record, it wasn't. Dixon’s girl saved our lives -- or rather mine -- cause the musicians ended that tour with wives and children up in Jackson. 

**There was a snowstorm in Jackson/When you and I met/At a club called St Sebastian's/But the sign said something different/I remember thinkin that I didn't/Have a shot at Mississippi/Television showed us/Which roads would be closing/There goes a rap show**

The two brats had just left the stage- run off rather, pursued by missiles- and the next act came on. She wasn't from Jackson but the audience shut up but fast. I was sulking in the back, nursing a whisky, thinking about our reception in Mississippi. We could have gone back there after this hellhole of a tour was over. Theyߴd _liked_ the bratsߴ act. I was wondering if I had a shot on getting them on a local television show somewhere. It would get them to shut up about their big break and what have you. I didn't notice what was happening on the stage after the brats left but I sure as hell noticed the actual angel on stage who was singing about the stars and the sun. I watched, entranced, for the rest of her show and came close to crying when it was over. She came off the stage, and the crowd surged around her. She fought through it to the bar, where I was and smiled at me. I nearly fell off my barstool at the power of that smile. It wasn't the big smile that you see splashed all over the media right now (where her husband was behind the camera) but a simple one, just a hi-how-are-you smile. There was nothing special about it. But it was like getting hit all at once with the beauty of the human race. She ordered a Jack Rose, such a pretty drink with a pretty name, and I thought that it fit her. She sighed and I knew that I was fucked. She never wore her wedding ring onstage. I didn’t know that she was married. 

I leaned over. “hey, i like your voice.”

She turned towards me. “thanks! i don’t.”

I laughed and, after a moment, she joined in. I asked, like the _smooth_ motherfuck that I am, “do you want to come back to my room? i’m staying here with the… eh… _people_ that came before you.”

She smiled. “i’d love to. there are better places than this --” A wide gesture, encompassing all of the bar, “- you know. “

I nodded. “the record label thinks they’re going to be the next eminem or drake or jay-z or whatever. until they get that money, we’re stuck here. i’m not too happy about it. Although staying here does have its upsides.”

“like what?”

“well, for a while there, the bartender was giving me free drinks.”

“they’re really that bad, huh?” Her eyes twinkled.

“i don’t like banjos _or_ rap music.”

“yet you manage them?”

“yeah. hey, talking to you is wonderful and all but can we talk about something other than the brats?”

She laughed, a clear sound, like water flowing through the mountains. “you call them the brats? wow, it’s never gotten that bad with me.”

I looked into her eyes, searching for an explanation. She sighed. “my husband manages me.” 

“is that hard?”

“sometimes… say i meet a nice person in a bar after a show, start talking to them. he’s bound to get a little mad.”

“that’s bull.”

She laughed. “glad you think so. i’m of the same mind. he’s not, so i have to deal with that.”

I raised my hand, and the bartender slid over another straight whisky. She raised her eyebrows at me and I just shrugged. I’d been drinking since I was fifteen and had enough of a tolerance to have a couple drinks for the night and be fine. She shrugged, either because she was so used to people abusing alcohol or because she didn’t really care. For her sake, I hoped it was the latter. 

“anyway,” she started. “let’s leave our work out of this encounter, shall we?”

I laughed. “i’m not quite sure how to interpret that sentence. but it’s fine with me, to leave the brats outta this conversation.”

She leaned towards me. “i still don’t know your name.”

“oh! what a breach of etiquette. my name’s erin.”

she nodded, fitting me to my ill fitting name. “i’m *********.”

“i like that name. brings to mind the civil war.”

********* laughed, throwing her head back. Her thick, shining, black hair fell in ripples down her back and I stared at it, in mild envy. My own hair was shoulder length right now but it had varied from being past my ass to a buzzcut, thanks to my drill sergeant father. He had strict ideas on hair length that he imposed on anyone that would listen. An angry looking man came over who looked, unsurprisingly, displeased. He laid a shovel of a hand on her shoulder and her back straightened up faster than I would’ve ever thought possible. *********’s face changed in the same instant, from something akin to happiness to something akin to the clinical anxiety I’d seen on some of my musicians’ faces before they went out on stage. She slid a bar napkin over to me, discreetly, without the man seeing. I grabbed it just as discreetly and shoved it into my pocket. The man gestured to the doorway and she slithered off her stool in one smooth movement, glanced at me, winked, and left. When she was safely gone (we both watched), her husband sat down next to me. 

“listen,” he started. “she’s mah wife and knows to leave other men well alone. ya understand?”

I looked the motherfucker in the eyes and said, like the cocky asshole I am, “nope. she came over and sat next to me. we struck up a conversation like any two strangers in a bar would.” 

“she’s pretty, ain’t she?” He leaned close to me, close enough that I could smell his cheap aftershave and the cheaper liquor on his breath. 

“yeah. prettier than either than us, by a long shot.” I leaned closer to him, letting him know that two could play at that game. His eyebrows furrowed together and I was pretty close to laughing. Watching stupid men think was a bit of a hobby of mine for who knows how long. 

He finally settled on, “ya cunt, leave her well alone or mah fist will meet ya face, ya understand me, yank?”

I rolled my eyes and made little shooing motions with my hands. He understood, the first visual clue that he wasn’t welcome near me that he’d gotten. He left and I signaled for another whisky.

**Everybody knew you as the/Wife of a famous man/Everyone who knew said/”There goes Dixon's girl again"/And even the walls will lean closer/When she plays the piano real slow**

That night in the bar wasn’t the last time I saw Dixon, much to my disappointment. I thought, and still think, that he’s a bastard. I glimpsed him in Santa Fe, New Mexico, without his wife but in the arms of a lovely looking lady who certainly wasn’t ********* . I was pissed, especially because I was managing a very good band whose songs were about lost loves (who later hit it big in the jazz scene and ditched me). Their songs had been making me think about all the shit that had happened to me. How most of the shit I went through on a personal level were due to my ignorance of other people. Of course, this made me think of ********* so when I saw her cheating ass of a husband, I was pissed. Also, the woman he was with was the woman I was dating at the time. I lost my head in the hotel room -- I think it was called the Lavender Inn -- and tore the fuckin room up, Pink Floyd’s The Wall style. The frontman from the jazz band came in and found me in the fetal position, watching YouTube. She touched my shoulder and I jumped. We picked up the fragments of my hotel room together and she never asked about the woman on the laptop screen, singing like the world was ending. 

**Haven't met too many women/In this business that I really like/But you can hold a little liquor/You can hold a conversation/You can hold your own mike**

I met her again in San Francisco, while I was touring with the jazz band. We met in a bigger venue than a Jackson bar this time. I’d checked the band lineup beforehand, which had become my habit since I saw Dixon’s girl. Which meant our meeting wasn’t _strictly_ chance, as one might define it with the OED. Her voice was just as beautiful as I remembered but she seemed worn somehow. We’d been exchanging texts back and forth since we last met and so she knew that her husband was an “adulterer”. Her word, not mine. I’d’ve said that he was a lousy-no-good-rotten-to-the-core-dirty-cheating asshole but she told me, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t so bad and I wasn’t to start anything up. Not that that matters now. 

She had just finished her set, before the jazz band and I went to sit with her by the bar. I was drinking a Manhattan (my third of the night) but she just ordered a tonic water, with a sad look on her face. Remembering her Jack Roses in Jackson, I asked her why she wasn’t drinking. Dixon’s girl looked me in the eye and told me her husband told her to stop. I raised my eyebrow and she elaborated: “he said it was bad for my vocal chords, i mean, this is after grabbing them during what passes for sex between us and not letting me drink chamomile tea or warm milk or any other thing you can think of that lets the vocal chords heal.” 

I said, not for the first time, “leave him. he’s preventing you from being something more- like a beyoncé or something.”

She shook her head. “he’s my husband and my manager _and_ my agent. it would be bad business to hold me back, don’t you think?”

I shrugged. “i think that he wants you to be his secret, his little toy that he can manipulate. now, both of us know you’re something more than that- some _one_ more, sorry- but i don’t think he does.” 

She looked me square in the eye, and said, with a steely, cold voice. “are you saying that _you’d_ like to be my manager?”

“whoa! no way, i have no experience with managing friends and i have _no_ inclination to ruin our friendship. i know some _good_ people, though, if you are interested. gay, if you need someone who won’t make a move on you.”

She laughed, her fake laugh that her husband got and I knew that the conversation was over. We talked about other things, throughout the night, and towards the end, I slipped her an Irish Coffee, and she smiled at me. Her husband, fortunately, didn’t make an appearance. I think I would have slugged him if he’d shown up. 

**And even that night/I learned the truth about your man/You gotta be big/To treat pretty girls bad**

I’m pretty stupid about anything that doesn’t involve music so I didn’t put two and two together about ********* and her husband until that night. Denying people growth (especially musicians) is like killing them slowly with a dull knife. It’s not good for anyone. She told me that her husband was purposefully denying her the chance to play shows one night. She was sobbing and I couldn’t do anything but give her shitty, cliched advice. The only thing that came out of that conversation was that I got it into her head that she should leave him. 

**And it's not much/But my money's on you**

As far as my shitty ideas went, enraging a psycho man who already thought that I was sleeping with his wife was maybe middle of the list. I have a scar on my stomach from this knife fight in Tennessee. It had happened because I’d slept with this guy’s wife who didn’t tell me she was married. Then she ran to her husband that I’d assaulted her (which is, honestly, the last thing I’d ever do). The motherfucker attacked me with a knife and I, who wasn’t armed, barely got to a hospital in time. I knocked the man out while my guts were threatening to spill out from his cut. Still, that wasn’t even the top shitty idea I’d had. (At the top of the list was entering the fucking music industry, which has fucked up my life in a shitload of ways at this point) 

Point is that pissing off Dixon wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me. What happened to Dixon’s girl, however, was the shittiest thing that happened to anyone I’d ever known. Dixon came into my office one evening (I was in between bands and was just lounging around like a sitting duck) and he pulled out a gun (a police issue Sig Sauer P229 9mm). I raised my eyebrows and he pointed it at my chest, which told me two things: one, he didn’t have training to kill; and two, he probably didn’t know how to fire the thing with any degree of accuracy (he was holding it one-handed). In other words, it was unlikely I’d die during this encounter, which I was _definitely_ down with. He yelled for a few minutes and then got to his point. He said that the last thing ********* would see was her lover’s face splattered over hers before he shot her, too. Just to clarify, the “lover” he was talking about was me. Which wasn’t true and I, being the witty, intelligent motherfucker that I am, tried to correct him. Just for the record, that did _not_ go over well on his side. 

**Well I heard from the rest of the world/You're in trouble/Bad news moves like fire/That you fight on the phone/Well I'm too far away/My well-wishin’ can't touch you/But I think of you still/More than you might suppose**

Dixon’s girl didn’t see me dead, obviously, but she saw me black and blue the next day. I texted her and asked if she wanted to meet up. She said yes. So we met at a cafe and I told her that she needed to get away from Dixon. She laughed in my face and told me that I was out of my mind batshit. I forced a laugh and the conversation moved on to other things. When we parted ways, she hugged me, the first time she’d initiated contact. I should have known.

The next day, Dixon called me and, as became our customary mode of interaction, he yelled at me for five minutes before growling “you’ll regret this” and hung up on me. I called Dixon’s girl right after. She picked up, fortunately, and said “hello, virginia.”

I asked, “who’s virginia?”

“how’s mother?”

“oh, your sister. how are you?”

“thanks for asking! i’m glad you’re doing well. i’m doing okay, thanks.”

I heard her cover the phone and yell “it’s my sister, please be hold on!” to Dixon, which in and of itself made my blood boil. “listen *********, you need to get out of there. he’s a fucking madman. please do right by yourself.”

she laughed. “don’t be stupid. i can’t go, i have a career. how sick is she?”

“he’s very fucked up, please. i care so much about you and you need to leave. now.”

“perhaps in a few months? can i-”

She was cut off when the phone fell to the floor and landed with a thud. Faintly, I heard Dixon yell at her “you’re a whore, a slut, and you deserve every part of this!”

I’ve been in a lot of bar fights in my time. No one’s ever pressed charges, mostly because I whip their asses. Point is that I know what a fist hitting a face sounds like. The next sound I heard out of Dixon’s girl’s shitty phone speakers was an open-handed slap across the face. Because Dixon’s girl was all of five foot, I knew it couldn’t have been her. A thud, something far bigger than the phone, hit the ground and I winced because it had the sound of being around 110 pounds, *********’s weight. That’s when I chose to grab my girlfriend’s phone and call 911. I heard ********* being beaten to death while the cops came to sort the quote-un-quote domestic dispute 

**Everybody wants to see you/With your hair down/Wanna hear you hit the high note/Wanna know if they can get you/For a little less/Girl, I don't/I know how those stones can fly/Had some hard goodbyes/Call me up, day or night/Free drinks and bad advice**

That’s what happened that night, that’s how I knew her, and that’s how I knew that fucker sitting in front of the Honorable Judge killed his wife. 

Thank you, Mr Heller. Your Honor, does the defense have any questions?

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to listen to the song Dixon's Girl, by Dessa, you can listen to it [ here ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eYOtE6dl6E) for the version from _A Badly Broken Code_ (which is the version this story's based off of) or [ here ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k9qdbNPmr8) for the version from _Caster, the Twin_ (which is the version I like better). The lyrics are the same but the music is different.


End file.
